INDUSTRY

Drawing inspiration from the ‘Socios’ crowd-management concept of Spanish football clubs, a Malta-based company named chiliZ allows esports fans around the world to have a voice in their favourite teams, leagues and events’ decision making.

Embracing both cryptocurrency and the blockchain technology, chiliZ’s goal is to enable fans to do more than just watch and hope the team they support succeeds by giving them direct tokenized voting rights.

Think about the concept of a fantasy league but with real teams and leagues, how cool is it to be able to weigh in your favourite team’s decisions as well as the leagues. Don’t agree with the format or how the seeding works? Then use your tokens to show how it should be done. Think some players deserve a spot on a pro-team? Then use your tokens to draft them onto the team. Of course things won’t be as simple, fan consensus will be needed for it to happen but you get the idea – fans can become ‘active managers or coaches’ in their favourite organizations.

The consistently fast-growing industry that is esports and its young, digital-savvy audience makes for the perfect environment for blockchain services and significantly increases its chances of adoption. What is promising about the chiliZ platform is how much it could enhance the experience of being an esports fan by allowing them to get involved more than just wearing a jersey or cheering at a venue. The ability for fans to have access to a currency that translates to influence over the entities they love could drastically increase the engagement and the fan investment across the entire esports industry. The company also talks about allowing fans to contribute more directly to the funding of the esports industry. Right now, several games such as Dota 2 use in-game purchases to fund competitions and tournaments, chiliZ aims at making funding easier by allowing games, teams and other organizations to trade management decisions for funding.

I’m sure many fans of esports and sports alike would want to have their say regarding their team’s decisions but there isn’t any system for them to voice their opinions and views which is why chiliZ can appeal to a great amount of people.

What do you think about this? Do you think esports will be evolving into fan-driven and fan-controlled organizations and structures via a similar system? Will you be getting tokens? Let us know in the comments!